The French Connection
A pair of NYC cops in the Narcotics Bureau stumble onto a drug smuggling job with a French connection.
- Director: William Friedkin
- Genre:Action / Crime / Drama / Thriller
- Runtime:104 minutes
Cast
Gene Hackman : Jimmy Doyle
Fernando Rey : Alain Charnier
Roy Scheider : Det. Buddy Russo
Tony Lo Bianco : Sal Boca
Marcel Bozzuffi : Pierre Nicoli
The film revolves around the smuggling of narcotics between Marseille, France and New York City. The film opens in Marseille with a policeman staking out Alain Charnier, a French criminal who ostensibly works as a former stevedore-turned-shipping executive but is in fact involved in smuggling heroin from France to the United States. The French policeman is assassinated by Charnier’s henchman, Pierre Nicoli.
In New York, detectives James “Popeye” Doyle and Buddy “Cloudy” Russo are also conducting an undercover stakeout out of their precinct in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, with Doyle dressed as Santa Claus and Russo pretending to be a hot dog stand vendor. After seeing a drug transaction take place in the bar, Russo goes in to make an arrest and the suspect they are waiting for makes a break for it with the detectives pursuing him on foot. After catching up with their suspect and delivering a severe beating after the suspect cuts Russo on the arm with a knife, the detectives aggressively interrogate the man and eventually force him to reveal where his “connection” is based.
After Russo’s arm injury is treated, Doyle convinces him to go out for a drink. At the nightclub they go to, Doyle becomes interested in two people: Salvatore “Sal” Boca and his beautiful young wife, Angie, who are lavishly entertaining several known Mob members involved in narcotics. Doyle persuades his partner to come along as they tail the couple; several scenes and exchanges between Doyle and Russo are shown establishing the fact that although the Bocas run a modest newsstand diner, they have criminal records (Sal is said to have held up Tiffany’s and also killed “a guy named DeMarco” while Angie drew a suspended sentence for shoplifting and Sal’s brother Lou served jail time for assault and robbery) and their extravagant lifestyle includes nearly nightly trips to several nightclubs, as well as driving several different new cars, which indicates they may be involved in some sort of criminal activity. Eventually there is a link established between the Bocas and well-to-do lawyer Joel Weinstock, who is rumored to have extensive connections in the narcotics underworld, Popeye and Cloudy allude to a drug shipment from Mexico bankrolled by Weinstock). Read more
